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Efficient Time Management - Japanese | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Khendon Newbie United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4420 days ago 13 posts - 31 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 1 of 9 12 April 2012 at 10:06pm | IP Logged |
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Hi all,
I have been lurking around here for several months now, reading about different learning strategies and techniques. Around one month ago I decided to take the plunge and learn a language myself. I travel for a living so have always "dabbled" a little, learning basic phrases and things in countries I visit, but have never taken the time to learn a language properly. I chose Japanese. Possibly not the wisest choice for a first new language, but I felt that despite the difficulties I may face, my interest I Japanese history, culture, films and food would provide the motivation I need to learn the language. I’d like one day to take an extended holiday there and visit various parts of the country without any guide at all. Anyway, that’s enough waffle, I shall get to the point. This website has helped me enormously when it comes to selecting learning materials, learning techniques and also just as a source of motivation to actually give this a go, with the amount of educated and enthusiastic people who post here. However, the thing I am having trouble with is managing, or rather structuring, my study time so that I use it efficiently, and learn as much as possible. The two fold problem is that on the one hand I am still new at this and trying to figure out which learning method works for me, and at the same time overwhelmed by the need to learn speech, pronunciation, grammar, the Kana and the Kanji. I am still very much a beginner, so effectively managing my study time is going to be critical to making progress. But how do I prioritise and select what to work on at any given time? I currently own Assimil, Rosetta Stone Level 1-3, and FSI FAST Japanese. I have Penguin parallel texts for later, and have copies of Heisigs’ RTK and RT Kana. I have Tae Kim’s Guide to Japanese Grammar, and have checked out many of the internet resources recommended on this site. I own Japanese audiobooks, movies and anime films, and I have been listening to Japanese radio in bed at night before I sleep to get used to the rhythm of the language and start picking words out. I have an SRS app on my iPad. Many of these resources are way beyond me at the moment, but I have them ready, as something to look forward to. I try to study for around one hour per day. Some days more, some days less, it depends on travelling and work schedule. Working within the one hour time frame, what should I be looking to achieve at a beginner level? Should I concentrate on Assimil for a half hour, then work on my Kana for a half hour? I pretty much have my Hiragana down now, but my Katakana still needs a lot of work. Should I be attempting to learn the Kanji already at this stage? I have avoided it thus far until I understand the language better. Though I own Heisig, I’m not particularly convinced of its’ efficiency in learning Japanese. It seems uneconomical to learn a “story” for the Kanji, then the meaning of it, then the compound words. The FSI course doesn’t seem particularly conducive to self study. Rosetta Stone….. I’ll be honest, I do not like it. To me, it does not seem like Japanese at all. Some of the things they try to teach do not seem to correlate with other resources, they do not explain grammar or sentence construction properly, and the accent/pronunciation sounds hideous to my ear. It is stilted and flat, nothing like Japanese on radio/film/news or even Assimil. I’d be grateful if anyone had any suggestions for which items to focus on at this stage, and opinions on the best use of say, one hour per day active study, and an hour before bed reading/listening/watching (idling). Regards Khendon p.s Sorry for the longest first post ever. Wall of text award goes to….. :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| atama warui Triglot Senior Member Japan Joined 4512 days ago 594 posts - 985 votes  Speaks: German*, English, Japanese | Message 2 of 9 13 April 2012 at 11:53am | IP Logged |
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Hi,
I personally started out with Pimsleur and Rosetta Stone. I dropped RS after around a week and only did Pimsleur, accompanied by various internet resources. When I look back at the kind of progress I made, I'd say.. - Michel Thomas instead of Pimsleur - Learn Hiragana right from the start - Continue Michel Thomas and Hiragana studies with a nice textbook Genki, Teach Yourself, Minna no Nihongo, Japanese for busy people, Assimil... these are the best known ones. I'd personally learn with Tae Kim's site. This is the best grammar course I've seen until now. One tip from someone who played around with a lot of material is: Whatever course you might chose, stick to it all through to the end. Courses build up and sometimes it's not obvious why they teach this and not that right now, but they follow a curriculum that in itself makes sense. Don't ruin your learning curve by switching around, constantly resetting your learning curve. You should be at (a shaky) B1 after finishing all this. Time to work on output on lang-8.com to solidify what you got, put it to use, learn natural Japanese (as opposed to textbook-Japanese). At this point, you will easily be able to judge material, gauge what potential it holds and if it benefits your current needs. Watching stuff with subtitles never worked for me. The subs caught my attention at some point, stealing the focus the Japanese dubs would have needed. Edited by atama warui on 13 April 2012 at 11:58am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4476 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 3 of 9 13 April 2012 at 6:40pm | IP Logged |
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I only started Japanese at Christmas so I don't have too much experience.
I would say that getting rid of the romaji "crutch" as early as possible is something that everyone recommends, and I'd certainly agree with that. It took me about four weeks to learn the hiragana well enough to be able to "sound out" words. (It surprised me how quickly I moved from "hiragana - how long will that take to learn" to "I wish the beginner's stuff would stop using romaji - it's *sooo* ugly"). I'd already started the Michel Thomas foundation course and, having finished that, I'm now working through Pimsleur I. There's no priority involved here: I have about 90 minutes of daily commute so these courses fill that time nicely. I use youtube and google for picking up specific points (colours, the names of months, the days of the week, names of days of the months, counters etc.). Remembering the Kanji (http://http://kanji.koohii.com/) has helped me get started with remembering some kanji. I'm using Memrise (http://www.memrise.com) for vocabulary. I've decided I need a specific goal, and passing the JLPT N5 exam seems like a useful one to start with. Memrise has specific vocabulary courses to help with that. I've just started with Tae Kim's grammar course; it's early days but that's looking quite good too. At the moment I find that 30m of memrise in the morning, 90m of audio courses during the commute and 30m of memrise/RTK in the evening are things that I can fit in regularly. I happen to *like* grammar, so I don't find it a chore to hop on to Tae Kim's or leaf through my grammar book on those occasions when I have a spare 15m or so. If UK TV ever stops being complete dross then I might be in trouble :-) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Khendon Newbie United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4420 days ago 13 posts - 31 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 4 of 9 14 April 2012 at 11:10pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks guys, the replies are much appreciated. There is some good advice here, and I found another good thread called "How to make the most of one hour a day" or something along those lines. Also a very good read.
I checked out lang-8 and that seems like a pretty awesome site for perfecting your written Japanese. I registered and started trying to build some credit with people by correcting their English on there for when I'm ready to take the plunge with my Japanese. People seem very tolerant, even of extremely simple sentences. I've decided to concentrate mostly on Assimil for now, whilst getting my Kana down solid. I follow some of the advice I've seen on this site for Assimil, listening several times, checking translation, checking the japanese written version and then shadowing each lesson. I downloaded the sample chapter of Heisig, and I have to admit I was very very sceptical of the technique. However something rather strange happened... I was just browsing through my previous Assimil lessons, just going over them when I see a kanji I recognise. Hmm... that's an eye on two human legs... keyword is see..... mimashita （見ました）... see in the past tense? Which I know it is from having done the assimil lesson previously. Kinda odd that after only an hour reading the first couple chapters and reading the stories associated with them that it would instantly spring to mind like that. I haven't even started studying the book properly yet and writing the Kanji. I realise it doesn't teach you all the meanings and none of the readings, but if these little light bulbs of recognition come on as I use other material and enable me to decipher meanings and readings quicker, it may be worth the effort buying the whole book and studying it. -Khen 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| atama warui Triglot Senior Member Japan Joined 4512 days ago 594 posts - 985 votes Speaks: German*, English, Japanese | Message 5 of 9 15 April 2012 at 10:25pm | IP Logged |
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Personally, I went a different route for Kanji: Learning the pronunciation first, Kanji some time after that in context. To each their own, as in.. different methods work for different people. To be honest, I couldn't even tell if my method was / is really efficient. It does work, but reading is still my weakest skill :)
I would say, work more with that, because Kanji are said to make vocab acquisition easier, and I can follow the reasoning. It IS possible to learn vocab by pronunciation as well, and you'll become familiar with all kinds of readings, but with Kanji, you'll also have a visual cue, which might be helpful. Go for it :) And if you didn't do that already, start a log in the language log forum section. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Khendon Newbie United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4420 days ago 13 posts - 31 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 6 of 9 16 April 2012 at 1:18am | IP Logged |
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Yeh I will give it a go first, see if it continues to work as intended for me. If not I'll try something else.
I was going to wait on the language log thing, as it's my first new language and I'm still very much a novice at Japanese! :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6431 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 7 of 9 17 April 2012 at 9:08pm | IP Logged |
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Personally, I'm a big fan of Heisig and found it to be a quick and easy way to learn the kanji. Of course, you don't learn the readings from it, but I find them gradually falling into place almost by themselves. Knowing the meanings of a lot of kanji is a big help in reading. My actual vocabulary is perhaps a little above 2500 words, but I am able to enjoy reading partly because of knowing so many kanji. Even if I don't actually know a word, I can often understand the meaning through a combination of RTK and context. At the moment, I am mostly reading materials for older children/young teens. I just finished the second Harry Potter and will soon begin on the third. I've also read a few other books in the 12-14 age-bracket plus a non-fiction book for adults. I was a bit surprised by how much I understood of that, but as I said, it was in large part because of RTK. A word of warning though: somewhere about two-thirds of the way through the book, you will get an urge to rip it to shreds. However, if you can keep going, it's worth it in the end. Of course, some people find that RTK isn't for them. If that's the case with you, I'm sure there are plenty of people around here who can give you advice about other methods.
As for the language log, go ahead and start one. It's a great way to keep track of your progress and since other people read it, you will get advice and encouragement. Plus, it's fun! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| dbag Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4833 days ago 605 posts - 1046 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 8 of 9 18 April 2012 at 10:02am | IP Logged |
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There is a Barrons course for Japanese which is essentially an FSI basic course. Hours
and hours of drills. Might be worth hunting down. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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